Derry turns out in their droves for the annual 'Darkness Into Light' charity walk 2024

Over 1,000 turned out for the Annual charity walk ‘Darkness Into Light’ in the early hours of Saturday morning in what was a beautiful sunrise, and in turn, raised much-needed funds for the HURT charity.

The route for this year’s walk started at Sainsburys car park on the Strand Road, along the quay and then crossed Craigavon Bridge before making its way back across the Peace Bridge and finishing at Sainsbury’s.

IN PICTURES: Derry rises early for annual Darkness into Light walk

A mass of yellow T-shirts adorned the walk along the quay and ages ranged from 5 years-old to 86 years old. Families, companies, schools, local small businesses and community groups had their representatives all out in force in the early morning, some running, others walking, others taking in the dawn sights along the picturesque River Foyle.

Delighted with the superb turnout and stressing the need to continue to support families, Sadie O’Reilly, HURT founder, speaking before the start of Saturday’s event, said: "As an addiction charity every penny of this is needed to help support families and those in need of support in both Derry and Strabane and the surrounding rural areas."

The local charity HURT is a unique drop-in centre offering holistic approaches to addiction recovery and family support. The team of trained addiction counsellors and staff are able to advise on all aspects of addiction and treatment possibilities.

Sadie added: "We offer clients up to 10 weeks of counselling, 3 complementary therapies and auricular acupuncture seeds."

Event organiser, HURT’s Leanne Doherty-Mulberry also paid tribute to the turnout on Saturday morning, adding: "A massive thank you to all who turned out to support this year’s ‘Darkness Into Light’ event in Derry. The people of this city and district never fail to impress us at HURT with their generous and continued support. Thank you all!"

Darkness into light started In 2009, in the Phoenix Park in Dublin, 400 people set off on the inaugural Darkness Into Light 5km walk to raise funds for Pieta. From small beginnings, the movement has continued to grow, and now there are over 150,000 participants in Darkness Into Light each year.